Skip Trace Feature Walkthrough

This is the new skip trace feature on PropertyOnion.com – it will show you how to use our service to skip trace all the owners of the upcoming foreclosure auctions. We run a skip trace on every owner of the upcoming auctions so you can quickly get all their data to market to them before the auction occurs.

Pre-foreclosure sellers are some of the best-motivated sellers leads you can get, and we can give you thousands of them each month for a very affordable rate.

You can read about how to use skip trace leads in your workflow in our in-depth skip trace tutorial here.


Skip Trace Walkthrough

Thank you for joining us. This video will walk you through the ins & outs of the propertyonion.com skip trace report features.

There are 4 ways you can get skip trace reports on our service. 
In this video, we will be reviewing each of these.
 
Order directly from our property detail page on any eligible property on our site.
Order skip traces in bulk from our foreclosure and tax deed spreadsheet view pages 
Upload or copy-paste a CSV file into our bulk search tool with the names you want to skip trace.
Order single skip trace reports one at a time by typing them into a single search window.

We will detail each of these methods one at a time.

The easiest way to use skip traces as needed in your workflow is to buy a pack of skip trace credits first.

You can order packs of 10 to 350 skip trace credits right from the page titled “about our skip traces” here.   

You do not need to order the skip trace credits upfront.

When placing an order, our system will automatically prompt you to purchase packs if you order reports that require more skip trace credits than you currently have on your account.

We encourage you to purchase as many as you can afford. 
The skip trace credits do not expire, so it’s a great way to lock in our best price forever, protecting you from any pricing increases in the future.

Ok, let’s get on with the demo.

1: Order on our Property Detail Page

The first way to order skip traces is by purchasing one directly from a property detail page like this one.

The property detail page is where our members get all the data points about any property coming up for sale at the county foreclosure or tax deed auctions.

You click “Order skip trace” next to any eligible owner name you would like information about, and your skip trace data will be instantly available like this.

The skip trace data will now always be available to you on this page. 
You can view it under your saved properties tab here, or you can download the PDF report here. 

The skip trace is now also available on your skip trace dashboard here.
You can also do the same for the 2nd owner of the property, and the data for both will be available. 

If a property owner is not eligible for skip tracing, there will not be a button to order the report like this one.

You see, to save our members precious time, we run a preliminary check on all the owners of properties coming for auction.

If there is no reliable skip trace data on the owners, we save you time and money by not allowing instant searches on them; if you tried to, it would only return a small amount of information not worth much to anyone. 

You can quickly filter and see which properties are eligible to skip trace using the “more filters” tab; select this checkbox “Skip trace available.”

 
2: Order bulk on the spreadsheet view page

The workflow of many investors is first to find all the properties coming up for auction you might be interested in pursuing.

For example, I can use the search filters to pinpoint all the 3/2 Single-family properties in the county eligible for skip trace searches.

Now we have a list of target properties, and I want to market to these owners with my postcards, emails, & text message drip campaigns.

I can easily order all the skip traces to get this contact data by selecting this box —— and then click order skip trace here. 

You can see that some of these properties have 2 owners, so I am prompted with the option to add skip traces for all the Owner2’s now. 

Since I want to increase the response rate to my marketing, and these extra names won’t cost much, I will add these to my order like this.

If you choose not to order Owner2 skip traces at this point, but you want to in the future, you can visit the property details page for the addresses and click “view skip trace” next to the Owner2 name and add it on. 

As you can see here, all the skip trace fields are available to us in this view.

We can view the skip trace data here in the spreadsheet view, or we can download all the data with custom fields we have selected in a CSV file to use elsewhere or for deeper data manipulation. 

The system is designed to work the way you want to work.

3: Order Using Bulk Skip Trace Tool

If you already have a list of property owners you want to skip trace, you can easily order them using our Bulk Skip Trace tool. You can copy and paste lines from your spreadsheet or upload the CSV file directly into our bulk ordering tool here.

When ordering using the cut and paste method, you must have your CSV in the correct format with the proper headers. You can view the correct form here at this link, and we have a template to copy as well.

Before placing a bulk order, download our CSV template here. Fill in your data under the pre-filled headers, copy and paste it or upload it directly to our bulk order form.

Be sure to have the minimum required information on the person you are trying to skip trace. 

These minimum required fields are the name of the person, the street address, and the City or Zipcode.  

Now we are ready to order the bulk searches.

Copy the lines from the CSV file, and paste them here into the bulk search window.

The system will now ask you to confirm that everything looks ok before it attempts to get your skip traces.

We cannot give refunds after you complete the order, so this is your last chance to double-check everything before completing the order.

Make sure to name the order something that will reference this search.
For this example, I will call this order “Distress Leads Farm Area.”

If we don’t find enough information on any of your entries, don’t worry, we will not charge you for them.

The failed search attempts will automatically and immediately credit back to your skip trace credit balance. 

Your account will only deduct a credit if there is a hit on the person you skip trace. 

So if you order 350 skip traces and only get back 300 successful skip traces, you will have 50 skip traces credited back to your account to use in the future.

The largest bulk package we sell is 350 skip trace credits for the low price of 29 cents each.

If you are ordering a bulk order search of more than 350, the system will charge you our best bulk rate of 29 cents for your order. 

So, for example, if your order is for 500 entries, the system will charge you 500 times 29 cents which is $145 in total. 

Now that our order is submitted, we see it is now pending completion.

The order will take between 1 and 10 minutes to complete depending on the order size.

You will receive a notification email when the order is ready, or you can later refresh the page to see if the order status has updated.  

There.
Now that the order is complete, you can see we had ordered 423, but 6 of them failed, so we got those credits back to our account.

Now we can download the skip trace data we ordered as a CSV file. 

We can manipulate the data as needed from the CSV file or import it into the next step of our marketing workflow.

4: Order Using Single Skip Trace Tool

If you would like to skip trace owners one at a time, you can easily do so on the single search form here.

Enter in the owner’s information here; when the order is ready, typically in 1 to 5 minutes, you will get an email alert to download the pdf report on the person like this, or you can refresh the browser window.

Again if for some reason, no data is found on your person of interest, you will be credited back your skip trace credit.

How to use your skip trace dashboard

Your skip trace dashboard is exactly how it sounds, a dashboard to review all your skip trace reports and activity history.

Since you can skip trace from anywhere a property is shown on the site, we believe it is essential to keep all the skip traces and features in one easy-to-reference page like this. 

The top right section is where you can quickly do your manual bulk or single skip traces.

Over on the left, you can quickly buy bulk packs of skip trace credits to use on your next order if you want.

Below are all the skip traces you have purchased to date.  

Two sections show only if you have used the bulk search order tool. Only the section below will be shown on this page if you have not.

This top bulk reports section shows the number of reports requested, how many successfully returned and how many failed and were credited back from the bulk order.

You can download the completed skip traces for each order as a CSV file on the right. This lets you easily view the data in your favorite spreadsheet program or upload it to another vendor that sends postcards, does cold calling, or email and text campaigns.

Below is the section that shows all the single search skip traces you have ordered and any skip trace purchased on a foreclosure property in our system.

Each skip trace you order from a property in our system will be linked to it by the address shown on this page.

This link lets you quickly see all the property info and the skip trace data in the same place you ordered it from, like here, but you can also view it here in your dashboard for quick, easy reference.

A great way to view your skip trace data is to view it in our Spreadsheet view like this.

Or, for deeper analysis and data manipulation, you can download all the reports in a single CSV file like this.

For analyzing a single search at a time, you can download the full individual pdf version of the full skip trace reports with this link.

We try our best to let the interface get out of your way so you can get the data any way you need it as quickly and simply as possible.

That’s the end of this walkthrough video. We hope you now understand the different ways to order skip traces on Property Onion dot com, and use our skip traces to find a better deal faster than ever.

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Damon Simon

Damon is a real estate investor, a serial entrepreneur, a writer, developer, and a graphic designer. Damon started as a graphic designer in the 90s and quickly created his own affiliate network in the early affiliate marketing boom of 2000's. Next Damon began his real estate career in 2010 and enjoys it as a side hustle when he is not nurturing bits of code & content for his baby, PropertyOnion.com

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